Two Preempts for Kneerim
Jill Kneerim at Kneerim & Williams has accepted a preemptive offer for The Worm at the Core by social psychologists Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski; Random’s Will Murphy bought North American rights. The trio, originators of Terror Management Theory, will argue that the fear of death is a driving force in almost all human endeavor. Drawing on more than 350 experiments they and colleagues have conducted, the authors will demonstrate how pervasive this force is, and contend that finding new ways to reckon with our own mortality may be our best chance to “grow up” both individually and as a species.
Kneerim also sold Bill Folman’s first novel, The Scandal Plan: or How to Win the Presidency by Cheating on Your Wife, to David Highfill at Morrow, who preempted North American rights. This political satire finds a Democratic presidential candidate’s polls lagging, whereupon his team manufactures a scandal to revitalize his image, but nothing goes as planned. Folman is an actor and filmmaker based in L.A.
Auction to Harper
Gail Winston at Harper won an auction for a memoir by bird rehabilitator Suzie Gilbert titled Flyaway, Inc.; Russell Galen at Scovil Chichak Galen made the six-figure North American sale. Gilbert will blend the amusing and sometimes tragic stories of birds she has helped, or tried to, with musings about the relationship between people and wild animals, and her own story of personal growth as she sought to understand what drove her to help these creatures. The book’s title refers to the nonprofit corporation she established to fund her activities. Pub date is fall 2008.
Three More from Hoag
New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag has signed a deal with Bantam, her publisher of the past 20 years, for three new suspense novels; Andrea Cirillo at the Jane Rotrosen Agency made the North American rights deal with Nita Taublib and Danielle Perez. The first two of the three, whose titles are under wraps, are linked and involve the family of a serial killer; tentative pub dates are spring 2009 and 2010. Hoag’s latest novel, The Alibi Man, came out in April.
Haber’s First
Leigh Haber has made her first acquisition for her new imprint at Rodale, Modern Times, and it’s Jane Heller’s It’s Not Over. I Still Love You: A Spoiled Yankee Fan Searches for Redemption. Trident’s Ellen Levine sold North American rights. Based on a piece that appeared in the New York Times in May, the book will take a look at what it really means to be a baseball fan. Heller is the author of 13 novels, most recently last fall’s Some Nerve (Morrow); pub date is sometime in 2008.
Thor Novels Optioned
Brad Thor, whose latest Scot Harvath novel, The First Commandment, just debuted at #7 on yesterday’s Times bestseller list, has optioned film rights to the Harvath books to Steven Paul at Crystal Sky Pictures. Heide Lange at Sanford Greenburger made the deal. Production will begin with State of the Union, the third book in the series, and the film will be a joint venture between Crystal Sky and Arad Productions, the third collaboration between Paul and Avi Arad after Marvel Comics’ Ghost Rider and the forthcoming Bratz: The Movie.
Eminent Domain
Rick Wolff at Grand Central has acquired world rights to Jeff Benedict’s Little Pink House via agent Basil Kane. Benedict will tell the story of Susette Kelo, who rallied her New London, Conn., neighbors to fight against a governor and a complicit city hall that planned to raze their neighborhood to complement a private sector development project. This battle made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005, resulting in a controversial decision.
